Bryce Canyon Day 3

Happy Easter!!

This morning we started off the day looking through our Easter Baskets and having our Easter Egg Hunt in the hotel room.  It was amazing how many places the Easter Bunny found to hide eggs in such a small room!!  I think that being hear and out in nature was a great way to reflect on the life of the Savior and the Sacrifices that he made for each of us.  As we were hiking today we ran across a sing that was posted in one of the resting areas that read "Silence Alone is worthy to be heard."  It was sure easy to reflect on everything as we walked the trails in silence, and listened to all the sounds of mother nature.  It is days like today that i am grateful for my wonderful family!!  We decided that since today was Sunday we would take it easy today and drive to all of the overlooks. 

But first for Grandpa Woolley we decided to do a little Geo Caching!!  This was a fun way to go some places that we would have never gone as it was not up in the park.

This was what we looked out on as we following the trail to our GPS location.

This kids found the box hidden in this tree.  We opened it up to log our information that we were there.  We did not plan ahead so we had nothing to leave in the box, but it was fun to see what other people had left in there.

There was a small bridge by where we had to park the car to go find the Geo Cache so we walked over it to see what was there and it was an awesome waterfall.

On our way out we had to stop and take our picture in the sleigh!!  My kids wondered why Santa left his sleigh here.

The entrance to Bryce Canyon National Park.

Fairyland Point

Inspiration Point

Lunch at the very top of Bryce Canyon!!

Rainbow Point

It made mom very nervous to have the kids stand on the railings!!  But dad thought mom was just a worry wort. 

The start of Bristlecone Loop Trail

This was a fun easy trail to hike, however since we were at the highest elevation here, we had to hike through snow.  It was fun walking through here and smelling all the pine trees.

This was a lookout in the middle of the trail.

Yovimpa Point

Black Birch Point

Ponderosa Canyon

Agua Canyon

Natural Bridge (which is actually an Arch)

Farview Point

Piracy Point

This was the last overlook of the day.  We hit a lot of places and took some small walks, but it was fun to see all the different views of Bryce.

Then we were back to Geo Caching.  This one was a small toy alligator hidden in this log out by a small lake that was by our hotel.  The kids decided they really enjoy Geo Caching, so grandpa when ever you need someone to go with you give us a call!!

This was a Tee Pee that we walked past when we were Geo Caching.  What a busy day we had!!  The kids were worn out by the end of the day, but wanted to go back and watch the new movie that they got for easter.

Bryce Canyon Day 2

Today we started off our day with an early Easter Surprise from Rachel & Mike!!

We are so excited for them.  She is 12 weeks pregnant!!  However Isaac would like to know where you are getting your baby from??

We started out our day today with the Queens Garden Hike!! This is us on our way down the trail.

As we were going down the trail we got to go through these cool little tunnels!!

This is Queen Victoria, if you can see her??  You can see her crown on top and she looks like she is holding something in her hands.

This would be her castle!

Standing in front of Queen Victoria!!  This was the perfect hike to start off our day, not to hard for the kids, however to our surprise the kids choose to keep following the trail around to the Navajo loop which we hiked yesterday.  This made our total round trip 2.7 miles!!  Can i just say my kids are awesome.  They made it the whole way.

This is on our way around to the Navajo Loop.

At one point on the trail, there were hundreds of stacked rocks.  They were very cool.  They were stacked anywhere people could get them to stay.  We added four more to the hundreds as each one of my kids wanted to make one.

This was my kids impression of the stacked rocks.

This is how Alexa wishes she could hike!!

Once we were done with our long hike the kids were not up to much more hiking so we made our way around to some of the overlooks!!  This is the view from the Paria View Point.

Paria Viewpoint again, it took us around to the other side of the mountain, giving us a different view!!

This was the view from the Swamp Canyon View Point, looking down into Sheep's Creek.

After dinner tonight while we were passing some time, we walked over to the Old Bryce Town.  Nothing over there is open as we missed there peek seasons by a month.  But we were still able to put our kids in Jail!!

And take there pictures as some Cowboys!!

I think that Kaleb was scared of the girl next to him!!

Tonight to end our night instead of swimming we decided to take the kids up to the Bryce Canyon lodge were we listen to a Park Ranger give his Astronomy lecture!!  It was actually quite fun, but i was expecting to learn a lot more on the stars, and all that was talked about was the moon.  But once the lecture was over we were able to head back to the visitors center where we were able to look through there big telescopes up into the night sky.  The kids were able to see Venus, The Orion Nebulae, & Andromeda Galaxy.  I think that Kaleb and Alexa really thought that was cool, it has been really fun being able to teach the kids new things while we have been here.  It was the perfect way to end our night!!

Bryce Canyon Day 1

Today was our first full day here at Bryce Canyon and it was a fun filled day!!  We started out the day learning that if you are not up at the crack of dawn you do not get a warm shower in our hotel.  Once we were all done taking our COLD showers, we were off to the Visitors Center.  At the visitors center we watch a short video to learn about how Bryce Canyon was formed and all about the things we would see while we are here.  Then it was into the small museum that was there as well.

The kids are excited that they may see some Black Bears!!

Alexa leading the boys away on there horse!!

And this is where we are at on the map!

Our first stop for the morning was the beautiful overlook at Sunset Point.  From the over look we set off on our first HIKE following the Navajo Loop trail.  It was a really fun hike down the canyon.

The switchbacks we hiked down!

Here we are part way down.

Taking a rest in the hole we found in the rock.

The first stop on the hike was at Two Bridges, which you can see in the back ground.  These bridges were naturally formed from water flowing through the canyon.

Resting in a Juniper Tree.

The trail was supposed to take us in a loop back to our starting place but as we came up to Wall Street, the trail was closed due to a rock slide, so this was as far as we got, and then we had to head back up the same way we came down.

Some of the kids were not to Happy that they had to hike back up!!

Starting back up the switch backs.

We are almost to the top!!  YAY

We got to pass by Thors Hammer on this hike.

Look at what we just hiked down.  What troopers we all made.

This was on our Second hike on our way out to Sunrise Point.

View of Sunrise Point.

Look at Alexa go!!  She was not to happy she had to spend the day hiking, but she did an awesome job.

Jeremiah on his was back from Sunrise Point.

I believe this is looking out over Wall Street that we did not get to hike through earlier in the day.

Kaleb is the one i worry about the most as we are hiking, boy does he need to learn to pay attention to where he is walking.

Our last hike of the day out to the Bryce Point where we could look back at where we were hiking all day from the other direction.  From up here we could also look out to the small town of Tropic.  As we got here last night looking for a place to eat, we learned there is only one restaurant open this time of year, so tonight we headed out to the small town of Tropic were we added two more restaurant to our list of eating places!!  The Pizza Place hit the spot tonight!!

The rule of the trip:  You have to Hike to swim in the Pool.  So once we got back from dinner we headed off to the indoor pool here at our hotel.  This kids had so much fun there!!

We forgot there life jackets so we purchased a tube for them to float around in!!  Despite the lack of Life Jackets it did not seam to slow down my Isaac Fish.  And to our surprise our Jeremiah who has been deathly afraid of swimming pools turned into a fish himself tonight.  Even jumping off the side to Adam!!  Who would have ever guessed he would learn to like the water??

What a great way to end the night, i think we wore the Kids out!!  There where out like a light tonight!! Oh and we learned that if you shower at night you can take a hot shower!!